


find the faith to saunter forward

by spacenarwhal



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Codependency, F/M, Injury Recovery, Permanent Injury, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-10
Updated: 2018-07-10
Packaged: 2019-06-08 02:51:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15233727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacenarwhal/pseuds/spacenarwhal
Summary: I’m not used to people sticking around when things go bad, Jyn told him what feels like a lifetime ago, but the reverse is true also. Jyn’s not practiced in staying in place when things get bad either. She ran with Mama and Papa without a choice in the matter, but Saw taught her how to assess a situation, made sure Jyn understood the importance of giving up a battle if it meant she could help carry on the war another day. She thinks Cassian learned that lesson too. He must have to have survived this long alone.





	find the faith to saunter forward

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Rebelcaptain week 2018! 
> 
> Day 1 prompt: Trust

The rebel base on Hoth feels like an endless maze of stark white lights and half-constructed pathways, ice slick underfoot and loose overhead, dripping where the light fixtures burn too hot. Claustrophobically shut in, one windowless room giving way to another and another, the sun shut out by the blast doors that remain permanently closed against the cold. Some days Jyn wakes afraid they’ll be buried alive in here, entombed in ice and snow.

If Cassian has similar fears he never voices them. Jyn doesn’t expect him to, soldier that he is, though she studies the thin line of his mouth, the crease between his eyebrows, the stiffness with which he holds his body. He’s far from happy. Despite their win against the Empire over the jungles of Yavin IV, there seems precious little to celebrate.

At least that’s how it feels, glancing at the sheen of sweat collecting on Cassian’s brow as he makes his way down another hallway, ever mindful of his step. The braces are the newest development in his recovery process, bulky and inelegant things fashioned from the limited medical supplies available to the medics on base. With time and practice he’ll be able to walk without assistance, and General Draven seemed to think that was a good enough prognosis, though he made no comment about returning Cassian to his previous capacity as a spy. Whatever Cassian thinks about that Jyn can only guess at, and for now she shuts that conversation away for another day, a bridge they’ll cross when they arrive. 

For now Jyn concerns herself more with their present problem, matches her pace to his as they walk the tired and overly familiar length of the nearly empty corridor that the medics have assigned him for practice. The first day Jyn offered him her arm and Cassian took it, leaned into her side with such silent gratitude that Jyn could half-hear the whiz of TIE fighters howling in the distance. Despite all the words they don’t know how to say, touch is easy. 

Touch is a tether. His fingers laced through hers, her arm careful around his waist, his chin against her temple, nose in her hair. 

It’s only fair, Jyn tells herself when trying to ground herself in rationality, the smallest favor she can return after all he’s done for her. On Yavin, sitting next to the bacta tank that held his motionless body, Jyn had gnawed her lips to ribbons, thinking of Cassian and a debt she could never repay, the scales tipped so drastically that Jyn could never regain her footing. 

Today, Jyn squeezes his arm to steady him and steadies herself all at once, breathes in the scent of his skin, sweat and bacta and sharp cold smell that blankets everything on Hoth. 

It is an odd kind of attachment they’ve formed, forged before Kay locked them in the data vault on Scarif, before he appeared like a dream, an impossibility, out of nothing and gave her time to finish their mission. Finish her father’s work. 

(Cassian in her arms and her in his, the sea burning white on the horizon, and of all the ways she'd imagined dying she'd never thought she wouldn't be alone.)

It should be easier, she thinks, given the depth and breadth of what she feels, the steadiness that takes root inside her when his hand clutches hers, it should be easier to stay at his side.

 _I’m not used to people sticking around when things go bad_ , Jyn told him what feels like a lifetime ago, but the reverse is true also. Jyn’s not practiced in staying in place when things get bad either. She ran with Mama and Papa without a choice in the matter, but Saw taught her how to assess a situation, made sure Jyn understood the importance of giving up a battle if it meant she could help carry on the war another day. She thinks Cassian learned that lesson too. He must have to have survived this long alone. 

But neither of them are who they understood themselves to be in the world before Scarif, and neither of them left that beach unchanged.

They’re volatile individuals, a product of nurture if not by natural design. Their self-dense mechanisms too well engrained to be relinquished easily (if giving them up is even what either of them is trying to accomplish. This is a war after all, they haven't survived this long by letting their guard down). 

And on the worst days neither her or Cassian know how to be the newest incarnations of themselves. 

Today he missteps and careens into the icy wall, the impact knocking ice loose overhead. 

“Cassian.” Jyn breathes, heart pressing up against the back of her throat. She keeps her hand on his arm, tries not to flinch when he pulls his arm away. “I’m alright.” He answers, voice tight. The lights drain the color from his face, his lips pressed pale. 

Jyn reaches for him again and Cassian steels his jaw, shakes his head. “Don’t. You don’t have to.” 

Jyn knows she shouldn’t take the rejection to heart. She can only imagine his frustration, having to learn how to control a body that no longer operates solely on his command. 

Jyn understands the frustration but that understanding doesn’t help her know what she should do. The helplessness drowns her from inside. Her own frustration rises from her gut, “Am I just supposed to leave you here?”

Cassian fixes her with an incredulous look. “Am I forcing you to stay?”

Jyn drops her hands, takes a step back. She’s lived alone for a long time, she’s still trying to remember what it’s like to stay around people whose opinions and actions are capable of hurting her. “Obviously not.”

When she walks away, Cassian doesn’t try to stop her. Jyn retreats to some frozen corner of the base, hands shaking from something other than cold. She misses the weight of the kyber crystal hanging around her neck, lost to that impossibly white beach, the scorching light, stretches her fingers to test the limits of the skin holding her together. She studies the back of her hands, the ropes of scar tissue laced across her knuckles and wrists, the tender patches of hairless pink skin, still shiny even in the low lights.

(She's never thought of herself as particularly vain but it isn't vanity that makes her stomach turn somersaults. It's the thought of this reminder she'll have to carry the rest of her days, however many of those there might be, Scarif and her father's sins, his atonement and hers, burned into her skin. There for everyone to see. She wonders if Cassian ever sees them and regrets believing in her. How can he not? How can he not blame her for everything he’s lost?)

On their better days Cassian finds her. He doesn’t seek her out in her hiding places, rather waits for her to reappear in a public space, weight braced on the twin walking aids he’s been using since he was released from the med bay back on the freighter they were evacuated to after Yavin IV. He approaches her in the mess or a hangar, offers her a cup of watery caf neither of them is meant to be drinking.

On their better days his mouth twists into something still too stiff to be thought of as a smile, apologetic though miniscule, and she stares back at him, not quite sure whether she’s meant to forgive him or ask for forgiveness. 

(She hates leaving him but doesn’t know how to stay, not yet. But she’s learning.)

It's the hardest days when Jyn forces her legs to take her weight and picks her way back, down the frozen corridors with their buzzing white lights (she digs her nails into her palms and does not think, does not remember, does not let herself remember).

Today Cassian is not far from where she left him, reclining against a wall, staring down at the braces strapped around his thighs and calves. His body sags forward, made small by exhaustion and pain, and he looks so impossibly defeated, as defeated as Jyn feels. She wants to leave all over again, avert her eyes from his wounds so she can lick her own in peace, but instead she forces her limbs loose and still.

”Cassian.”

Cassian turns his head towards the sound of Jyn’s voice and like always there’s a momentarily glimmer of surprise in his eyes when he catches sight of her. He’s not nearly as quick these days at hiding what he feels, not from her, and she memorizes his expression before his features smooth into something inscrutable.

She tilts her chin and Cassian’s shoulders drop, just a fraction, and he extends his arm to her. A silent apology for her to take or refuse. Some days Jyn shakes her head and others she creeps close and grabs hold.

Today she strides towards him, slips her arm through his and helps him to his feet. Cassian leans on her, lets her take his weight and offer aid. Jyn grunts under her breath, it hangs in white mist in front of her lips.

“Let’s try that again, shall we?” She breathes and Cassian nods, “Let’s.”

He draws a sharp steadying breath as he takes another step forward, trusting Jyn to help him until he can stand on his own. 

Jyn matches his measured pace, careful, firm.

She’s not only one trying to learn what it means to have someone who comes back. 

**Author's Note:**

> Title from _Never Quite Right_ by The Mountain Goats


End file.
